Digital Innovation Greenhouse MOOC Data Hackathon

October 20, 2015 @ 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

Challenge: You and some fellow U-M students will be provided with a synthetic dataset covering a range of student demographic and academic attributes. This data will include about 1.5 million records representing the student experience in 150 large classes at U-M. We’ll also provide example code that will serve as the basis for building a grade predictor tool.

Working with a team of fellow students, your job might include cleaning and transforming the data provided, testing and tuning the grade predictor, then designing and building a student-facing interface that would support student course selection. You can choose to focus on some or all of the following tasks during the Hackathon:

Improve the existing grade predictor code to make it more accurate and/or relevant

Explore grade predictions for the same students across a range of courses

Provide guidance to students about how to interpret grade predictions

Create rich visualizations of the data that will be displayed in helpful ways for users. These might refer to predicted performance in a single class, or compare predictions for a set of courses a student is considering taking

Bring your best game! Your work will be showcased to an international audience of thousands of learning analytics professionals participating in an ongoing Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on “Practical Learning Analytics”. This course is being taught by Tim McKay, Professor of Physics, Astronomy, and Education, and Director of the LSA Honors Program.

Who: This data challenge is open to all students at U-M: undergrads and grad students from any of Michigan’s 19 schools and colleges. Student teams will be mentored by U-M learning analytics experts who will provide hints and help guide you through your challenge. Professor McKay and other members of the U-M learning analytics community will be provide hints, review ideas in development and help guide you through your challenge.

Logistics: This event will last from from 10:00 am – 4:00 pm on Tuesday October 20th at the DEI Lab of U-M’s Office of Digital Education & Innovation (located at 500 E. Washington, Suite B). Food and DEI swag will be provided for everyone, along with something special for the winning team. Space is limited to the first 20 U-M students who express interest. There will also be opportunities to learn about paid fellowship opportunities in the Digital Innovation Greenhouse.

Signing Up: If you’re interested in participating, please email dig-hackathon@umich.edu. Please tell us who you are, what you’re studying, and which part of the challenge most interests you.